Dress is a dangerous topic to meddle with.  I myself like the attire of the maidens of Scheria, though Nausicaa, we must note, was “clad royally.”  But climate cannot be disregarded, and the vestment that was so fitting on a Greek girl whom I saw at the Second Cataract of the Nile would scarcely be appropriate in New York.  If the maidens of one of our colleges for girls, say Vassar for illustration, habited like the Phaeacian girls of Scheria, went down to the Hudson to cleanse the rich robes of the house, and were surprised by the advent of a stranger from the city, landing from a steamboat—­a wandering broker, let us say, clad in wide trousers, long topcoat, and a tall hat—­I fancy that he would be more astonished than Ulysses was at the bevy of girls that scattered at his approach.  It is not that women must be all things to all men, but that their simplicity must conform to time and circumstance.  What I do not understand is that simplicity gets banished altogether, and that fashion, on a dictation that no one can trace the origin of, makes that lovely in the eyes of women today which will seem utterly abhorrent to them tomorrow.  There appears to be no line of taste running through the changes.  The only consolation to you, the woman of the moment, is that while the costume your grandmother wore makes her, in the painting, a guy in your eyes, the costume you wear will give your grandchildren the same impression of you.  And the satisfaction for you is the thought that the latter raiment will be worse than the other two—­that is to say, less well suited to display the shape, station, and noble air which brought Ulysses to his knees on the sands of Corfu.

Another reason why I say that I do not know whether simplicity belongs to nature or art is that fashion is as strong to pervert and disfigure in savage nations as it is in civilized.  It runs to as much eccentricity in hair-dressing and ornament in the costume of the jingling belles of Nootka and the maidens of Nubia as in any court or coterie which we aspire to imitate.  The only difference is that remote and unsophisticated communities are more constant to a style they once adopt.  There are isolated peasant communities in Europe who have kept for centuries the most uncouth and inconvenient attire, while we have run through a dozen variations in the art of attraction by dress, from the most puffed and bulbous ballooning to the extreme of limpness and lankness.  I can only conclude that the civilized human being is a restless creature, whose motives in regard to costumes are utterly unfathomable.

We need, however, to go a little further in this question of simplicity.  Nausicaa was “clad royally.”  There was a distinction, then, between her and her handmaidens.  She was clad simply, according to her condition.  Taste does not by any means lead to uniformity.  I have read of a commune in which all the women dressed alike and unbecomingly, so as to discourage all attempt to please or attract, or